Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Fear of Inflation Can Make It Happen

The April price surge can be explained away by economic aberrations, but the Covid recovery is sure to include other scary surprises.

May 13, 2021 at 11:00 AM UTC

By Michael R. Strain

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Maybe inflation starts here.
Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Consumer prices surged in April and some commentators sounded inflation alarms. Others shrugged. Both reactions miss the mark. Neither panic nor nonchalance are justified.

The consumer price index grew at a 4.2% annual rate, the fastest in well over a decade. Some observers argued that the spike was driven by quirky and transitory factors and therefore should not be seen as a portent of sustained, damaging inflation.